Fan Pitches “Star Trek Uncharted” Series

If you’ve only ever seen the films, you’ve never really seen “Star Trek” at its height. While the movies are the true home for “Star Wars,” television is where “Star Trek” has birthed its greatest moments over the years and numerous different TV series.

Many fans would argue episodes like “City on the Edge of Forever,” “Balance of Terror,” “The Best of Both Worlds,” “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” “In the Pale Moonlight,” “The Measure of a Man” and many more outshine practically all the movies in terms of storytelling and characterisation.

Even with the franchise reinvigorated with J.J. Abrams 2009 reboot, many fans are still clamoring for a return of Trek to TV screens and there have often been rumors of that return, rumors that never seemed to pan out. However, one report today indicates that one possible idea is in the works and involves a major fan.

TrekMovie reports that Michael Gummelt, creator of fan concept “Star Trek Uncharted,” has been invited by Paramount to pitch his idea for a new “Star Trek” television series to the network sometime this Summer.

Gummelt’s concept has been in the works for twenty years, most of that time under the name “Star Trek Beyond,” and he says that: “For Trek to return to TV after so long, it needs to be reinvented for a new generation. Not a reboot, that’s already being done in the movies. What I want for this series is for it to be the future – a Star Trek TV series that feels modern and feels futuristic relative to our current times.”

There is of course one obvious problem with any TV series – the setting. With the Abrams films forging ahead on a different timeline to all the other incarnations of “Star Trek,” it begs the question of how the show would fit in relation to the new movies and the old universe established by the earlier movies and the various TV shows.

Gummelt’s concept kind of gets around it in the same way the recently revealed “Mass Effect: Andromeda” game does – namely by setting the action on a ship in the distant Andromeda Galaxy and far away from the Milky Way. The upside here is that the new show will essentially be exploring all new territory and won’t have any baggage per se to deal with.

The concept is reportedly set two centuries after the time of Captain Kirk (and over a century after Picard), and twenty years after a galaxy-wide war with the Romulans resulted in the collapse of their empire and the Federation now encompassing much of the known galaxy. Focus has turned inward as the Federation must deal with internal issues, and Starfleet has become more of a police force than a bunch of explorers.

During this time, a new USS Enterprise is built and sent to the Andromeda Galaxy using ‘space folding’ technology. The reason for the mission? A mysterious signal has been received from there claiming to be from the creators of life in the Milky Way and inviting us to meet them.

The pitch however doesn’t follow the Voyager mold of one ship alone in unfamiliar space as the Enterprise will occasionally return to the Milky Way, while a new Starbase is being built in the Andromeda galaxy and two more ships will join the expedition after the first year.

Gummlet has also spoken about the chances of him, a non-filmmaking superfan, being able to successfully pull off his pitch: “I’m not under any illusions about my chances (and I realize CBS has the rights to produce any new Star Trek TV series), but it’s a chance of a lifetime and I have nothing to lose. I have a great job and a great life, so why not take the chance?”